Colonial Czechoslovakia? Overseas and Internal Colonization in the Interwar Czechoslovak Republic

Abstract

This essay contributes to the recent discussions on the history of marginal-colonial cultures situated on the fringes of the Empire. Focusing on interwar Czechoslovakia, the essay discusses how to productively think about the coloniality of this land-locked country. In particular, it looks at the entanglements and reverberations between the overseas colonial ambitions and projects of internal colonization in the eastern part of the republic, namely in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. It argues that the internal colonization shared the same objectives and rationalities with Czechoslovak and other countries’ colonial projects overseas and that it also emulated earlier imperial forms of rule. Instead of trying to put the case into some ready-made category, I suggest making use of the governmentality studies perspective. The essay demonstrates that the contingent nature of the Czechoslovak colonizing projects in Ruthenia could be best unpacked using the concept of colonial governmentality, respectively of security apparatuses, and points out questions that may orient future research on the Czechoslovak internal colonization.

Keywords:

• Colonialism
• czechoslovakia
• ethnicity
• governmentality
• internal colonization
• Subcarpathian Ruthenia

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank both referees who helped the author to reconsider and sharpen author’s arguments. Thanks to the stipend provided by the Fulbright Commission Czech Republic, the author had the opportunity to participate on the Transnational Approaches to Modern Europe Workshop at the University of Chicago when rewriting this essay. Tara Zahra, Michaela Appeltová, Ben Van Zee and Gregory Valdespino provided the author with their valuable insight and comments. The author thanks also goes to Laura Kuen who read the first draft of this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I have accessed these sources in the collections of the Czech National Library in Prague (Národní knihovna ČR).

2 These sources are located in the Archives of the interwar Czechoslovak administration in Berehovo (Берегово, Beregszász), Zakarpattia (Закарпатська область) in present-day Ukraine.

3 Svoboda (Liberty), the largest of the Czechoslovak colonies, est. 1922–1923, accounted for 900 inhabitants, 460 of whom were Czechs and Slovaks, former members of the Czechoslovak Legions and their families (Kuštek 2018, 98). The life of the colonists was observed carefully by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense, which was responsible for Legion affairs. It was presented to the public in the form of exhibitions organized by the State Land Office (e.g., at the National Economy Exhibition 1922 in Prague), and it also found its artistic representation in the novel Puszta by Josef Knapp (1933).

4 Besides Rusyns, Czechoslovak officials turned their attention also to the supposedly lowest stratum of the local population, the Roma, as a group upon which the new administration could demonstrate its capacity to discipline and enlighten the supposedly most uncivilized. A special segregated Roma school in Uzhhorod, established by the School Inspectorate in 1928, became the key locus of this project, as described by Pavel Baloun (2018).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by Long-Term Conceptual Development of the Research Organisation RVO: 68378076, Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.